


The Doctor Will See You Now

by Enigmaris



Series: Ectober 2019 [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Dentists, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 11:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21179024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigmaris/pseuds/Enigmaris
Summary: Fic Written for Day 1 of Ectober 2019Prompt: Fangs/ShatterDr. Grant Hayes is Amity Park's only dentist, and he's a good one. However, living in a town riddled with ghosts comes with it's own unique challenges. Challenges like unexpected company.





	The Doctor Will See You Now

There was something say about living in Amity Park. Things were never predictable. And with the chaos came work. A lot of work. Being a dentist in a small town was meant to be an _easy_ gig. Just regular annual check-ups and watching little ones lose teeth and whisper excitedly about the tooth fairy. That was what Grant had signed up for when he’d took up this practice from his uncle 35 years ago.

And for the first 33 years it had been exactly that. Decades of the occasional broken tooth from a football accident and dental crowns. A root canal had been Grant’s equivalent of an exciting week. There were comfortable routines in his life. He knew his patients by name, which was nearly the entire town, he knew their birthdays and what their hobbies were. Grant had liked the stability, the comfort of knowing what came next.

That comfort had long been blasted to smithereens and all that was left behind was paperwork.

So much paperwork.

Grant had spent the entire evening and much of the night, instead of watching some old black and white movie with a glass of red wine, working through paperwork. He had no idea how to convince insurance companies to cover the cost of treatment for the 15 people who had come to him with teeth that had been magically flipped upside down by an insane teeth ghost and had to be surgically fixed. Phantom had saved everyone from having their teeth harvested but there were still some people who required treatment and Grant would damn himself to hell before making them pay for it.

This was his life now.

Grant sighed and carefully typed out yet another online form, probably designed by demons, in an attempt to convince an insurance company to do their job and insure someone.

_CRASH_

Grant flinched at the sound of shattering glass and equipment. He had automatically lifted his arms to cover his head but after fifteen seconds of silence, carefully he looked up. There was a light flickering down the hall from his office. Grant thought he could hear breathing. A break-in? That would be almost a novelty compared to the ghost attacks of the last week. Grant reached under his desk and pulled out the bright green bat that Jack Fenton had given him as a gift during his last check-up.

(The man had had one cavity, unsurprising based on his fudge intake, but he’d been a great sport about it.)

Grant got up and carefully slunk towards the hallway. He had no idea why anyone would break into a dentistry. Aside from the Nitrous Oxide there wasn’t much worth getting into, not in a small town like this. He plodded down the hallway, as silently as he could, which wasn’t very silent, but it was the principle of the thing. The noises became clearer as he hedged towards one of the examination rooms. Harsh breathing that almost sounded like sobs and the occasional clinking of shattered glass.

The light coming out of the room wasn’t the fluorescent white that he’d installed last spring. Instead it was an eerie green glow. Good thing he’d brought the bat then. Grant stopped right outside the partially open door and awkwardly maneuvered his body until he could see what was inside. Hopefully it was just one of those weird octopus things. He was pretty sure he could scare one of those off on his own. No need to wake the Fentons at this late hour.

Although he would be calling them tomorrow about buying some sort of security system.

He was able to glimpse a black boot and he frowned. He didn’t consider himself an expert in identifying ghosts, but he was pretty sure there was only one ghost it could be. Grant nudged the door open, bat in hand and revealed that the town’s hero was sitting in the fetal position in the middle of one of his examination rooms. Some of the furniture in the room had been overturned and was glowing faintly from residual energy and all of the glass display cases had shattered.

The door creaked mid-swing.

Phantom’s head shot up from where it had been roughly pressed into his knees.

“I’m sorry! Please don’t shoot!”

Grant immediately lowered the bat. He might have been a bit paranoid about ghosts but he wasn’t an idiot. Phantom clearly meant no harm. He reached out and flicked the light on. Now, with more light, Grant could see the tear tracks on Phantom’s face. He had no idea ghosts could cry.

“I’m not going to hurt you Phantom.” Grant said, the teen ghost looked at the bat in his hands suspiciously. Grant leveled his voice out to the one he used on children who were scared of him and dropped the bat. “Seriously. I promise. I only brought that because I thought someone was breaking in. I won’t hurt you.”

The teenager relaxed, almost against his will. He looked pitiful and frightened in the room, curling up against the feet of the large chair behind him. His lips looked green and inflamed, like he’d been biting them. Grant had seen it a few times in his more anxious patients, although normally their lips were red, not green.

“Do you need something? A place to stay?” Grant found himself asking. “The dentistry’s not much, but I’ve got a couch in the break room that might be nice.”

He had no idea if ghosts even slept but he didn’t know what else to ask. Not really.

“I uhh…no.” Phantom said awkwardly. “I have a place.”

“Right. So…is that teeth ghost back?”

“Dentius? No. He’s still in the zone. I promise he’s not going to harm anyone.”

“Good. Good. It’s been a busy week cause of that creep. Thanks for taking care of him.” Grant said, his voice still that same soothing tone, Phantom was responding well to it and based on the damage to this room, he didn’t want Phantom to lose his cool again. “So if you-”

“My teeth hurt.”

Oh. Phantom was glaring at the floor, his entire body stiff as if he was ready to launch himself through the wall and away from him. He looked so terribly young then. It reminded him of some of the young children he’d worked with over the years. The one’s with gingivitis or their first cavity who were so frightened to even open their mouths that they mumbled when they talked to avoid showing their teeth.

“Well.” Grant said. “You came to the right place.”

“Huh?”

Grant stepped fully into the room, bat forgotten at the door. He walked over the shattered glass and towards Phantom. He motioned to the chair behind the boy.

“Come on, Phantom. Let me see what I can do for you.”

“I…”

“I’m sure you haven’t had a check up in ages. That’s not good for your teeth you know. You should be seeing a dentist once a year.” Grant said, talking as if this was one of his normal patients and not a dead child who’d come to his dentistry to have a panic attack on his own. “So get into the chair and let me have a look. I promise I won’t bite if you don’t.”

It was the same joke Grant had told a thousand times and it got the same reaction that all teenagers gave it. A roll of their eyes and a scoff. Phantom floated up and gingerly landed in the chair. Grant picked up the rolling chair that had been tossed aside and placed it in position. He also picked up the rolling table and began collecting supplies for a routine examination. Phantom looked human enough and he had come to a human dentist, he could only assume that meant something.

When he’d gotten everything in order, he turned back to see Phantom was laying in the chair looking so tense he might as well have had rigor mortis. His jaw was clenched, and his lips pursed so tight they were white. Phantom’s glowing green eyes were looking far ahead, staring at nothing that Grant could see. Grant lifted up an eyebrow and slid over, ignoring the sounds of breaking glass.

“Phantom. You regularly fight dragons. Don’t tell me you’re frightened of an old man who’s got nothing but a few small tools?”

“What? I’m not scared of you.” Phantom said, his lips firmly covering his teeth.

“Well then you should have no problem letting me clean up and get a look inside, right?”

Phantom looked away, the glare he’d been giving Grant for being called scared fading into actual fear. Grant frowned as the tension in the boy’s body grew.

“I’m not going to tell anyone.” Grant promised. “I can’t. Doctor Patient Confidentiality, you know.”

“I’m pretty sure that stops applying once someone _dies_.”

“Not in Amity it doesn’t. Strange town this one.” That made Phantom laugh a little, some of the tension in his body fading. He still wouldn’t look at Grant.

“You promise not to…to tell anyone?”

“I promise.”

“And…you won’t freak out?”

“Phantom, some of the things I saw in dental school would scar a Vietnam war veteran. I promise you, whatever’s going on inside your mouth isn’t going to bother me one bit.”

Phantom nodded, straightened his shoulders, and let his mouth drop open. Grant leaned forward and then paused at the sight before him. The ghost’s gums were practically glowing with inflammation around the front of his mouth. His incisors were missing and in their place something new and not at all normal was growing. Phantom immediately snapped his mouth closed and moved to leave.

“I knew I shouldn’t have…” Grant reached out and placed a hand on the ghost’s arm.

“Hold on there, son. I just was surprised by the amount of inflammation. That looks painful. Do you want me to get some numbing gel for that?”

“I…numbing gel?”

“Yeah. Don’t know if it’ll work on a ghost but it can’t hurt you anymore than you already are.”

“Didn’t you see?” Phantom whispered. “What’s happening to me?”

Grant wanted to lie, to say that the teeth looked normal to him. But he knew better than that. He pushed a little bit more on Phantom’s arm to get him back into the chair.

“Son. I was afraid you had haunted cavities and that I was going to have to call Jack Fenton to make me a mini ecto-gun.” Grant said. “This is a far better outcome.”

“Better?” The boy asked, sitting all the way up. “I have FANGS!”

“Yes. That’s what they look like.”

“Don’t you get it! Fangs!” The boy said, his chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon. His eyes looked truly haunted, or rather they looked hunted.

Grant did not get it, not at all. He’d seen the teeth of plenty of ghosts over the years and most of them were rotting inside their skulls, if they even had teeth at all. There were some ghosts with fangs but they hardly looked menacing. But Phantom was panicking, some of Grant’s tools and the chair he was sitting in were beginning to vibrate and glow in response to the boy’s power.

“Son. I’ve looked at a lot of teeth over the years.” Grant said softly. “And you want to know what I’ve learnt?”

The boy didn’t say anything, but the room no longer felt like it was going to explode and Phantom didn’t look like a deer about to sprint in front of a moving 18 wheeler. Grant really had no clue what the problem was, but he did have plenty of experience comforting people over the state of their mouths. Whether it was cavities or braces, people were always very concerned with how their teeth _looked_.

“It don’t matter what they look like.” Grant said. “Plenty of people’ve got crooked teeth or yellowed teeth or who knows what else. And that doesn’t really matter in the long run, doesn’t reflect on them as a person and it won’t even tell me if they floss. I can promise you that the look of a tooth doesn’t say anything about how good someone is or isn’t.”

“You think so?” The boy asked hesitantly.

“Strange looking teeth aren’t the end of the world. I promise you that.” Grant said. “Now can you let me check up on you and try and numb the pain? Growing teeth ain’t easy.”

It took about thirty seconds for the teen to agree. He fell back into the chair, as if a huge weight had been removed and he let his mouth drop open. Grant pulled out an unopened tube of numbing gel from a nearby desk drawer, readjusted his gloves and got to work. The numbing gel worked, surprisingly, the pain was chased away and Phantom relaxed further into the chair. Grant started work on cleaning out the teeth. Normally this would be a job for one of his nurses, but he was alone right then, and he didn’t mind doing the job himself.

As he worked, he asked questions. Asked about Phantom’s hobbies and interests outside of ghost hunting. The same thing he did for all of his patients, although he didn’t ask this one about his schooling, seemed a bit of an awkward subject. Phantom was hesitant but eventually began talking while Grant had a hand in his mouth, rooting around for any evidence of tooth decay.

The boy’s fangs were terribly sharp and they punctured his gloves a few times, but Grant didn’t say a word about that.

Thirty minutes later, Grant finished the cleaning and had applied a fluoride paste to the teeth to strengthen them. He had no idea if that would even work on a ghost, but it was the thought that counted. In a final show of good faith, he made up a baggy that had a cheap plastic toothbrush, a box of floss, and the tube of numbing gel inside of it.

“Here you are Phantom. You’ve got a clean bill of health on your teeth. They looked perfect. Not a cavity in sight. I notice you don’t floss often, so I’ve given you some to start out with. You promise me you’ll do it, once a day?”

“Yes Dr. Hayes.” Phantom said taking the bag from him.

“Good. Now make sure to brush every morning and night.” Grant lectured.

“I will.”

“I put the numbing gel in there. You put it on every 4-6 hours for as long as the pain persists.” Grant told him. “If the pain doesn’t go away after a week or so, come back here and I’ll check your gums again.”

“You want me to come to your normal office hours?”

“Uh…might not be the best idea.” Grant said before snapping his fingers. He grabbed his nearby notepad and pen and wrote out his number. “Here. Give me a call if you’ve got any problem with your teeth, alright? I expect you to come here next year, same time.”

“Next year?”

“Well I’m your dentist now, aren’t I?”

Phantom looked very, very sniffly at that point. He did in fact sniff once and his eyes were now slightly watery. He reached out and took the number, the personal number he so rarely gave out to his patients.

“Yeah. Yeah you are.”

And then Phantom disappeared, a whispered, echoey thanks his last words. Grant stayed in his seat for a little while longer, alone with nothing but the flickering lights about him. He looked down at his hands, where faint red lines and pin pricks had formed from the fangs. He rubbed at them lightly and then nodded to himself.

Teeth were teeth after all.

No matter how sharp.


End file.
